Tomsbikeblog

The Parklet is Coming! To San Diego. What? Where? When? How exciting. If there were only some way to find out more about this.

Someone yarn bombed this bike rack and rendered it useless (well… as a bike rack). I rode by it yesterday and noticed that it was modified (the web of yarn across the big wheel was removed). Nice. Go park your bike there.

San Diego’s bike friendly Mayor Bob Filner leading a school bike ride last Monday. Riding a cool Easy Motion Ebike. Thanks to the guys at Ivan Stewarts Electric Bike Center for helping out with the bike. This will be a great year for bicycling in San Diego. 

My wife Linda rockin it at CicLAvia last weekend. She is a super lady. We had so much fun riding from Venice Beach to downtown LA with 150,000 of our closest friends that I can’t tell you.  Please join us at San Diego’s premier open street event on August 11th, CicloSDias.

Details at:

Ciclosdias.com

Rumbi the Glarf.

I ride my bike by this statue every day on my way to work.  I finally got the nerve to get close enough to find out that there is a small plaque that identifies it as Rumbi the Glarf. My wife googled Glarfs and found this amazing story. It is totally worth reading. 

http://chulavistaliving.com/2008/06/15/what-are-those-dinosaurs-doing-in-bonita-we-get-the-scoop-on-the-dinos-along-bonita-road/

I thought that I would lose a few pounds by biking to work daily. I just realized why this hasn’t happened. My route to work goes right past this bakery. Hans and Harry’s. This place is like a magnet for my bike. 

I got a flat on the way to work today. Out in the middle of nowhere. I pulled over and stared at my back tire and wondered why I didn’t have a spare tire or patch kit or a wrench or a pump anything in case this happens. Then it started raining. Right on queue. I swear I heard a trombone go “wha wha”. My fault. It seemed kind of funny to me so I started laughing. Why does a person laughing by themselves look kind of crazy?

Anyway, I schlubbed my bike to the nearest bus stop and took the bus to the trolly station where I have a bike locker. Took the trolly to work and wasn’t really that late. 

I told someone at work and they said “I bet you wish you still had your car”. 

I said “No”.

I am not sure why it took me so long to do this. BIKE LOCKER! There are FREE bike lockers available at most of the transit stations in San Diego. (SANDAG manages the bike locker program. You have to sign up for a locker on icommuteSD.com. It takes about a week to get assigned a card or key, depending on the type of locker, so don’t just show up at the locker with your bike.) 

I ride to the trolley station (about 2/3 of the way to work). Swipe my locker card. Put my bike in the locker. Swipe my card for the trolley and that’s it. Oh. That’s right. I have an electric bike. I also take the bike battery to work and charge it during the day so it gets me home. 

I like the trolley. Drink my coffee. Listen to a podcast. Eavesdrop. Stare out the window at the traffic on the freeway. Makes me feel like a grown up.

Thanks SANDAG. What took me so long?

OK. Here’s a vacation photo. My family was visiting kinfolk in nocal over the holidays. I rode my bike over the Golden Gate Bridge. Something I did a LONG time ago but it was so long ago that I have a hazy recollection of the whole thing. 

It was awesome. Of course it’s awesome. It’s the Golden Gate Bridge. I was talking about it afterwards and heard myself saying that there were too many bikes and there was kind of a slow moving “train” of walkers and bicyclists crossing the bridge. Then I remembered the sea of automobiles that were basically gridlocked on the bridge. Too many bicycles? I take that back.